Palestine “By The Numbers”

I’ve never been a “math person.”  Numbers intimidate me – I’m much more comfortable with words.  I’ve always thought it was a right-brain/left brain “thing,” but my math professor friend tells me I’m wrong – anyone can grasp math concepts!  Not sure I totally agree, but looking at the situation in Palestine “by the numbers,” here are a few to muse upon:

Historic Palestine

67% - Percentage of “Arabs” (Christians and Muslims) making up the total population of historic Palestine before 1948

33% -  Percentage of Jews in the total population of historic Palestine before 1948

78% - Percentage of land that was allocated to the Jews in the 1947 UN “Partition Plan”

22% - Percentage of land allocated to “Arabs” in the 1947 Partition Plan

537 -  Number of Palestinian villages destroyed in the “Nakbah” (disaster) of 1948

750,000:  Number of Palestinians made refugees by the 1948 Nakbah

Berlin Wall/Israeli "Separation Barrier" - a comparison

2/1:  Ration of the length of the Wall (“Separation Barrier”) to the length of the internationally recognized “Green Line” or border between Israel and the West Bank.

8 kilometers (about 30 feet) – height of Wall

$255,000,000 (that’s million!) cost of constructing each kilometer of the Wall

$3,2,000,000,000 (billion!) paid by US taxpayers that is sent to Israel every year (That’s more than $8,000,000/day).

101 – different types of permits that Palestinians living in the West Bank must obtain to cross into Israel for education, work, medical appoints, visits with family, etc.

50,000 – fruit-bearing trees destroyed on Palestinian farmland since 2009

A burned olive tree in Palestine

7 miles wide and 30 miles long:  size of Gaza (living in the Pacific Northwest, I think this is about the same size as the Long Beach peninsula in Washington State!)

1.8 million – population of Gaza

560,000 – Israeli settlers living in illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem

99.7 – Percentage of Palestinian children (some as young as 5!) who are convicted of “crimes” like throwing stones (note: Israel just passed a law authorizing 20-year sentences for stone-throwing!)

200,000 – Current population of Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank.

500 – Approximate number of Jewish settlers living in Hebron (many in homes appropriated from Palestinians!)

1,000 – Number of Israeli soldiers stationed in Hebron to “protect” the settlers.

Shuhuda Street Today

1141 – Number of Palestinian shops closed on Shuhuda Street, Hebron, after American-born Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Muslim men praying in the Abraham mosque in 1994 (and wounded another 125) Yes, you read that correctly!  A right-wing Jewish extremist killed 29 Palestinian Arabs, and the Arabs were punished!

1114 – Number of Palestinian homes on Shuhuda Street closed to their owners at the same time.

0 – Number of shops on Shuhuda Street open today!